It’s been more than a month since we introduced the new scalable Test Management model with TestSets and Test Instances.
In this release we improved the functionality around this new model:

Reporting for Test Instances

Sorting Test-Instances, inside a TestSet

Adding a whole Test-view to a TestSet

Improved GUI when adding the Instances

In addition to the above and the bug fixes we also added a one-way integration with Trac, like we already have with Bugzilla, Jira, and Fogbugz.

Notifications Change

The change that we believe would be mostly appreciated by you is the change in the notification mechanism. Until today, the notifications were sent to the user, according to his preference:

From this update, the notification will not be sent to the user who’ve made the change. There’s no reason to send me an email with the notification of change in a Test, if I’m the one who did that change. So let’s assume there’s a new Issue – the system checks who should be notified for this issue : all the users whose preferences is “for all issue changes” + the author if the author have check in “where I am the author” preference + the assignee, if the assignee set on his preference to be notified. So before sending PractiTest will remove from this list the current user (who, is in this case, the user who created this new issue). In a way, from now on, PractiTest is smart enough to really send only the notifications you need.

Would you like to manage and run your tests from your iPad? with PractiTest you can! What do you need to do? just login from your iPad (using Safari). A picture is worth a thousand words, so here it is:

Sometimes potential customers ask us to help them understand whether PractiTest is the best solution for their needs. We believe that having Joel working with them to help define their process and customize the platform to their needs is invaluable.

But there are a number of additional cool features that make PractiTest a unique solution. We want to show you (only) five of them:

Anti-Bug Duplication mechanism – Duplicates, bugs that are reported more than once in the system, are a pain for every organization. The overhead and the waste of time of looking for the original bug, defining it as a duplicate, and rejecting the new one is something that we all would like to save from our daily lives.
What if you knew the bug you we are writing right now is a duplicate of an existing bug?
PractiTest comes with a built-in solution to the duplicate-bugs problem: the minute anyone starts entering a bug the systems instantly displays the similar bugs candidates, enabling the user to decide whether this bug is a new one or not.

Bug by mail – With PractiTest you can report Issues directly from your email client. This is great if you have customers or field engineers (sales, support, etc) who don’t have access to PractiTest, or if you want to forward someone’s bug directly from your inbox to the system:

Unbelievable Customizations – not only can you customize the fields for your Requirements, Tests & Issues, but you can also implement your own user-permission levels and even define the workflow of your issues.
Read more about PractiTest’s customization

Hierarchical custom views – This is one feature that, once you understand how it works and the value you get from it, you cannot stop using it.
The basic idea is that you can organize your tests-tree based on any fields you choose, for example release version, but ALSO, based on product component and sub-component, and ALSO based on Run Status, etc.
Unlike folders where the Tests are only shown in one place, with views you can show a single test in multiple different trees based on your needs. This is similar to how gmail works with Tags, but BETTER!
Read more about our hierarchal custom views.

Integration with SVN – This is a must for many development teams who choose to work in this very organized way. For each issue you can see all the SVN commits linked to your issues, and also instruct SVN not to allow a commit without an issue being assigned to it.
You can about our integration with SVN

Writing this post made me realize we have a lot more to write about, but maybe I’ll leave that to a latter post.

Sometimes potential customers ask us to help them understand whether PractiTest is the best solution for their needs. We believe that having Joel working with them to help define their process and customize the platform to their needs is invaluable.

But there are a number of additional cool features that make PractiTest a unique solution. We want to show you (only) five of them:

Anti-Bug Duplication mechanism – Duplicates, bugs that are reported more than once in the system, are a pain for every organization. The overhead and the waste of time of looking for the original bug, defining it as a duplicate, and rejecting the new one is something that we all would like to save from our daily lives.
What if you knew the bug you we are writing right now is a duplicate of an existing bug?
PractiTest comes with a built-in solution to the duplicate-bugs problem: the minute anyone starts entering a bug the systems instantly displays the similar bugs candidates, enabling the user to decide whether this bug is a new one or not.

Bug by mail – With PractiTest you can report Issues directly from your email client. This is great if you have customers or field engineers (sales, support, etc) who don’t have access to PractiTest, or if you want to forward someone’s bug directly from your inbox to the system:

Unbelievable Customizations – not only can you customize the fields for your Requirements, Tests & Issues, but you can also implement your own user-permission levels and even define the workflow of your issues.
Read more about PractiTest’s customization

Hierarchical custom views – This is one feature that, once you understand how it works and the value you get from it, you cannot stop using it.
The basic idea is that you can organize your tests-tree based on any fields you choose, for example release version, but ALSO, based on product component and sub-component, and ALSO based on Run Status, etc.
Unlike folders where the Tests are only shown in one place, with views you can show a single test in multiple different trees based on your needs. This is similar to how gmail works with Tags, but BETTER!
Read more about our hierarchal custom views.

Integration with SVN – This is a must for many development teams who choose to work in this very organized way. For each issue you can see all the SVN commits linked to your issues, and also instruct SVN not to allow a commit without an issue being assigned to it.
You can about our integration with SVN

Writing this post made me realize we have a lot more to write about, but maybe I’ll leave that to a latter post.

This week we performed a PractiTest system upgrade to implement a feature we’ve been planning for some time: a more flexible and scalable Test Management model.

This new model allows you to create and manage a Test Library with all the Tests you need to validate your application or system. It then provides a separate tab, called Test Sets & Runs, where you plan and run your testing tasks (or cycles) based on the tests already written and available in the Test Library.

This new model enhances the flexibility and scalability of your testing process:

Allowing you to create a test once in the Test Library and re-use it multiple times on your Test Sets (or even multiple times in the same Test Set).

Makes it easier to manage your test repository by having only one copy of each test.

Provides a quick and easy way to track the status of your test throughout their lifecycle by looking at all their runs from a new Test Sets tab available on each of your tests in the Test Library.

The new model is available by default in all PractiTest project created from this moment on.
Since we don’t want to disrupt the work in existing projects we will provide users with a period of time in order to migrate their projects from the previous to this new testing model. To migrate your project or to get more information simply contact your PractiTest representative or send an email to our support team.

After reviewing a number of tools and alternatives, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs chose PractiTest for SaaS-based QA management for its outsourced IT projects.

“The fact that it was available to all parties involved simply through the Internet was one of the main reasons for choosing PractiTest. Another one was that there would always be a unified and up-to-date view of the project…”

“PractiTest helped us enormously to keep track of the project – progress and avoid
misunderstandings”.

“With the help of PractiTest – customizations we were able to define new issue types and better
cluster the information, allowing us to filter out data and generate more accurate and detailed reports. We
recommended PractiTest within our Organization to be used in further projects”.

This week we performed a system upgrade with a feature that was being requested repeatedly by a number of users: the ability to integrate PractiTest with Bugzilla and FogBugz.

This upgrade also comes to improve our existing JIRA integration, and it enables Organizations to keep working with their available Bug Tracking systems, while allowing them to link these “external” defects into PractiTest and gain the traceability between the 2 platforms. You can learn more about this integration and how to configure it from our help pages.

In addition to the new and improved integrations (and to some additional issues fixes) this upgrade includes improvements to PractiTest’s import mechanism, helping users by providing more feedback on errors during the import process.